by Annie Spence
You weren’t a saccharine teen romance and you weren’t wordy prose, expanding my mind and vocabulary. You were something different than what I’d been reading. You were relatable. I didn’t know unique and smart and snarky and anxious girls were important enough to have a book about them. I wasn’t even thinking of myself as an audience deserving of being reflected. They say your first changes you forever. And you did. You most certainly did.
Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I wanted more books that felt like me. More talking like people actually talk and illustrations of awkward moments. More mundane suburbia and the crazy unmundane shit that happens in it and more of reading and seeing the realest emotion on the expressions of characters’ faces.
So thanks for being my gateway drug.1 I’ll always think of you awash in the nostalgic dreamy teal of all my ’90s memories.
Stay Sweet,
YOUNG ADULT FICTION—Meyer, Stephenie
—Me, Bite
Dear Twilight Series,
You’re on a card table at a yard sale, sitting next to an old Baby Alive doll and a plastic makeup organizer that says MADISON in foam sticky letters. Someone’s not tagging along to college after all, hmm? How the mighty have fallen.
A little lonely now? Well it serves you right for hogging young Madison’s prime leisure-reading years, rehashing the same old tropes, and never introducing her to something new.
Oh, he loves me! But he wants to kill me! But he really hates that about himself … But he loves me so much he’d rather die than be without me! But in order to keep him around I have to promise my mortal life to a vampire coven. Oh, look, we’re pregnant! This birth is going to break most of my bones and my baby daughter is going to start dating my werewolf ex-boyfriend. Well, we do crazy things for love!
Gah, please don’t figure out a way to tag along with her to campus. We can’t be sending Madison off on her own with that kind of blueprint for romance.1
No, I’m not buying you. Stop looking at me.
Get a Life,
ENGLISH—STANDARD—Morehead, Philip D.
—Equivalents, Equivocal
Dear Penguin Roget’s College Thesaurus in Dictionary Form,
I know you think I only use you when I need something. You’re hurt because I don’t include you in any of my favorite book lists, even though I turn to you more often than any of those other volumes, tomes, folios, pocket editions, and opuses.
But you are more than just a plunder call to me (eesh, I guess we’re not on the same page with what “booty” means). You are so special. How do I say this without sounding banal? You’re exceptional! You’re singular! You are indispensable. See “necessity”! That’s what you are to me. So file this letter under “love.”
I’ve had you since I was a freshman in college or, as you might say, a tenderfoot in finishing school. You stayed by my side through the terrible fiction I wrote for my first writing class, when I thought plot meant every story had to include a car crash or an abortion. You helped me redefine public service when I was in library school: communal ministration or general duty. And upon graduation, you assisted me in amassing words for my résumé that made me seem more qualified for jobs without lying. I’ve never typed the word “competent” so much in my life! Those were crazy times.
You’ve been around for my entire adulthood, which means we have all the same references. For example (I know you love examples!), you are new enough to include “bunghole” but not modern enough to have entries for “cray” or “on fleek.” Because who cares what the kids are saying these days? You’re 782 pages—I’m pretty sure we can find a way to tell someone their eyebrows look nice. Like, “The mane on the summit of your head is winning.” There. Easy.
It may be true that you are often overlooked. I feel like people assume you’re boring. But they haven’t spent hours reading your “color” entry like I have; cobalt, fir green, doeskin, ocher, aubergine. It makes me want to write a dystopian novel about Rainbow Brite. Your “Food” section compels me to depart from my desk, venture to the local java boutique, gorge myself on almond horns and apple pandowdies, and describe every bite to passersby as, “Delectable, my kindred spirits. In fact, decadently ambrosial.”
That’s why I get so handsy with you. I get excited when we’re together. I get lost. In the best way. And maybe I don’t show you off to my friends or recommend you at the library. But you have to believe me, I bring you with me everywhere, because you are always inside my head. When I want to tell someone that a book is “great” but stop and think of a better word. When I tell my toddler to say “Oh, man” instead of “Jesus Christ” (I swear I don’t know where he got that). When I tell my husband that I’m not mad, I’m just mightily irritated. There’s a difference. Look it up.
With Intimacy, Deep Affection, and Ardor,
MEMOIR—ANIMAL—Grogan, John
—Dog Lovers, Suspicious Of
Dear Marley and Me,
Stay calm. I’m passing you this note to ask if you’re being held against your will. This guy you’re with, I’m not sure he’s reading you for the right reasons. In fact, I would go so far as to say he’s not reading you at all.
May I mention, and I hope you don’t mind my saying so, that you have a pretty niche, if also large, audience, and that is people who love their dogs and refer to them as their fur children. In a Venn diagram situation, you would be inside that middle part labeled “People Who Love Their Fur Babies” and also “Readers Who Want to Feel Good and Be Done With It.” And while it’s possible that your reader falls into the latter category, I feel that a true Fur Parent wouldn’t leave their Fur Baby locked up at home in order to go to a bar and read about loving Fur Babies. Especially if their Fur Baby is of the crazy, drooling, bounding, untrained variety, like Marley. You’re the kind of book that begs to be read at home, while petting a Fur Baby. See how much I’m saying Fur Baby? It’s kind of annoying, isn’t it? You might pass that tidbit onto your readers in the future.
This dude holding you has no dog hair on his button-up, going-out shirt. His shoes don’t look gnawed upon. It started raining, and he didn’t get up and pay his tab, explaining that his dog, like Marley, is afraid of thunderstorms. In fact, it’s clear he’s in it for the long haul here tonight. I know, because I’ve been staring at him for the past fifteen minutes and, though I am obviously unnerving him, he remains on his stool.
Okay, maybe you don’t think that’s enough to go on. Maybe he doesn’t own a dog, but he told you he was reading you for book club or because his grandma gave you to him, which is a whole different Marley and Me Audience Venn Diagram I don’t have time to get into.
Maybe this guy’s just waiting for the bus and he happened to be carrying you with him. But if he’s really reading you, then why does he have his eyebrows furrowed? Like he’s trying to digest something he’s never thought of before? You’re not Proust. You’re about a dog that wrecks shit all the time. I’ve checked you out to sixth graders for book reports.
Also, why isn’t he crying? I hated reading you (sorry). I spent the majority of my time with you rolling my eyes. But I still have a soul, so I cried when Jenny lost the baby and Marley consoled her. I still had to get the tissues at the end when it’s, like, you know, The End. For Marley.
You are designed to make people cry, even people that don’t like you. You’re like that old Folgers commercial they play at Christmas when Peter comes home from college and makes coffee for his mom. She smells the coffee and cries out, “Peter! Oh, you’re home!” And then any normal person begins crying and attempts to reconcile the anger they feel at an advertisement jerkin’ their tears with the overwhelming happiness they felt when Peter came home. But this guy isn’t weeping even a little bit. His only facial expressions are Confused by Book, Confused Checking Phone, Looking Up to See If She’s Still Watching Me.
So, to sum up, the man you’re with is either (a) neglecting his dog at home, (b) Completely Dead Inside, or (c) using you to pick up chicks.
Or, it’s possible, he’s a decent guy with social anxiety who read a totally different book that told him to go out in public with a lovable memoir to help him start a conversation and make one friend. Now I’ve ogled him and probably scared him back into hermit life forever. I feel bad. Ach! Marley and Me, some of your feel-goodness has seeped in. I should go talk to him. I hate to admit it, Marley, but you’ve taught me a valuable lesson.
Lots of Love,
Dear Marley and Me,
Nope. Definitely(c).
I Knew It,
SUCCESS—PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS—Covey, Stephen R.
—New Tricks, Old Dog
Dear The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,
JANUARY 2005
I am so pumped about this! New Year, New Me, now let’s get our Seven Habits oooonnnnnn like Donkey Kong. Okay, Part 1. That’s just the “explaining why” part. Pass. Part 2. Cool graph, okay, got it. Here we go! Habit 1: Be Proactive. That’s me!
You’re kind of long, fella, aren’t you? Lot of circle charts, too. I think, basically, you’re just saying: Be proactive. Be committed. Make circles. Thirty-day test??? I don’t have time for that. I’m going to skip ahead to habit 2.
“Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind.” Pssh, got that right.
This is making me sleepy.
JANUARY 2008
I totally forgot I had you! I was doing really good working through your steps for a while. I remember there was, like, “Have a goal” and be a circle. Where was I? I had to be on part 3 already. “Paradigms of Interdependence”: well, well. Fancy talk.
Oh, I like this: making deposits in an Emotional Bank Account. Six steps. Six steps within the seven habits? More with the making commitments? You’re so naggy. Sorry, that was a withdrawal from your emotional bank.
JANUARY 2011
“Habit 6: Synergize.” Synergize? That sounds sooooo boring.
I forgot how many fucking charts this thing has.
JANUARY 2014
Let’s just start fresh. I don’t remember where we last left off. Cool graph!
Whoops, here I go dozing again!
AUGUST 2016
Annie to Visiting Friend:
“Yeah, it’s super insightful. I totally read it. Borrow it? Keep it! I practically know it by heart.”
Effectively Yours,
DRAMA—20TH CENTURY—Miller, Arthur
—Drama, High School
Dear The Crucible,
A teenage patron just asked for you, and even though I haven’t thought of you since you were required reading in my high school English class, I wonder how you are these days.
I read you grudgingly and was happy to leave you at the end of the term. First, you are a play we had to read aloud in our own halting monotone voices, which was terribly boring. But more than that, your story reflected back to me the bullshit of high school. You were an echo of all the bummers of being an adolescent: the gossip and judgment and hysteria, your punishments of death more violent, but no less dramatic, than the parking lot fights, the “accidental” shoulder shove in the hallway, and the threat of a bad reputation.
It occurs to me now that there’s a reason our English teacher assigned you at exactly this point in our lives: to teach us a lesson about how words can take on a power of their own once they leave your mouth—as young Abigail’s did when her accusation about her lover’s wife backfired and resulted in his hanging. Or maybe it was a lesson about how judging others tears at the fabric of your community, and then everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else, and all your cows get loose in the mayhem. I gotta be honest, though. Even in the Advanced Placement class, such personal lessons were lost on us. It took us well into the third act to stop giggling every time someone said “Tituba.”
Still, as I take you from the shelf now, I’m met with memories not of the dull readings and the dangling promise of a TV cart being rolled into the classroom to watch the movie version. Instead, I have nostalgia for you and I have to ask—did I give up on you too quickly?
For all the repetitive stage directions and long asides, there were afternoons when my crush might get stuck reading John Proctor’s part, and I could daydream about him speaking the words “I may think of you softly from time to time” to me. Also, my friend Jack and I got a lot of mileage out of passing notes that accused each other of being in the woods with the devil. We called everyone Goody So and So for the rest of the semester. So you couldn’t have been all that bad. We had some good times, right?
Since I saw you last, I’ve read more about the Salem witch trials in Stacy Schiff’s The Witches: Salem, 1692. You two should get together. I learned that the Puritans were hitting the cider pretty hard back then and had gone through a harsh winter. Indeed, they were probably suffering from seasonal affective disorder, which, I know from experience, can make you a delusional nutjob. That information might have punched up our drowsy performance of you. The courtroom scene where Abigail accuses Mary of shape-shifting into a bird may have been particularly entertaining with slurred speech.
Do you think we could give it another shot, now that I’m a little older and not too distracted by teenage drama to absorb your tale of fanatical faith and deceit? Are there more like you I’ve cast aside and forgotten because of my hasty heart and infatuation with MTV? Should I dig out The Odyssey? Am I ready for Virginia Woolf? I’ll never know unless I try again.
For now, I have to send you away with my patron, this less-than-thrilled sophomore boy, but I promise when you get back, we’ll give ’er a go.
See You (Way) After Class,
JUVENILE SECTION
—Jobs, Very Important
Dear Public Library Children’s Section,
You make it look easy, like fun even. But what you do is hard work. Important work. And you’re the only one that can do it.
Kids come to you for lots of different reasons. Because they need a biography for a book report, a superhero comic, or the next Dork Diaries. Because it’s too hot outside. Because they can be loud. Because they need quiet. Because their parents dragged them. Because no one is taking care of them. Because you’re a joyful space. Because you’re a safe space.
Hard work. These kids have got to fall in love with you. They need to learn to read, so they can love to read, so they can understand how many different lives they are capable of. It’s VERY important. More than the Philosophy section and the College Test Prep books and the Nobel Prize–winning novels upstairs. Because no one’s going to be there to read or write those other books if you don’t pull your weight.
So show off your Maurice Sendak, your Jacqueline Woodson, and Lois Lowry. The kids will see themselves in you. Amazing Grace and Stuart Little will tell them how brave they can be. Your nonfiction section can provide advice without judging. And your chapter books can be counted on to deliver the whimsy. Be at the ready from morning to night and on weekends too. Be a place of peaceful comfort and rowdy imagination and encourage lots of plan making for the future. Don’t ask anything in return. You have to give it all away.
You’re not getting much help from the rest of the world. I don’t know if you’ve been talking with the Current Event books, but it’s pretty disheartening out there. So you’ve really got to rally. Stand up straighter on the shelves. Try to make your titles visible through all that book tape. Hold it together.
Take Care (like really good care),
ZOOLOGY—MAMMALS—DOMESTIC—Gilbert, Stephen K.
—Cats, Inside Of
Dear Pictorial Anatomy of the Cat,
I don’t even know how you got here. Without your book jacket on—which is who knows where—one might have assumed you were some sort of mythical fairy tale about kitties. But in reality your insides … are about insides.
Don’t get me wrong. I thought your lateral view of the abdominal viscera was neat. But, can I say something? You’re creeping people out. You go on and on about the cutaneous maximus. This is a public library. No one here k
nows what that shit means.
Where will you go from here? It’s difficult to say. We could put you in the annual book sale, but we know the one guy who would buy a book about cat dissection, and he’s been permanently banned. Your various depictions of gross cat claws with the skin ripped away might make for good Halloween cards but, truth be told, I don’t give cards out on Halloween. And I just won’t go there for Valentine’s Day.
So …
Go ’Way Now,
SHORT STORIES—Brautigan, Richard
—Shtick, Librarian
Dear Revenge of the Lawn,
You’re a good book. You are. But you gotta go. Don’t ask why.
Okay, here’s why: I got you from a bartender in Chicago whom I was probably going to make out with, but then I started dating my husband and ditched the bartender and never gave you back. I remember it was in October because Michael texted me to ask what I was doing that weekend and I told him I was going to carve pumpkins and maybe break a date with this guy, your original owner. And he replied, “Have fun gutting your pumpkin and your bartender.” And I thought it was rather clever and flirty and, well, that was the beginning of the end for you. In my fickle heart, you were already on your way back to where you came from.
Where you came from, I imagine, is behind a bar in a stack of other yellowed literary paperbacks just like you, waiting for the next Pretty Young Thing to order a dirty martini and mention that she likes to read. The librarian shtick really works fellas into a lather. And I did have a little bit of a Parker Posey in Party Girl thing going on back then. Plus I hung out at that bar a lot. It was only a matter of time before your quirky satirical stories fell into my delicate bookish hands.